


Guardian Angel & Imaginary Friend

by Fledglinger, PercyByssheShelley



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: After Eden, Brotherly Angst, Childbirth, Grief/Mourning, Life-Affirming Sex, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28950984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fledglinger/pseuds/Fledglinger, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PercyByssheShelley/pseuds/PercyByssheShelley
Summary: Aziraphale and Crawley watch over Cain and Abel, as their guardian angel and imaginary friend. While there is no Arrangement yet, their tentative truce from the Wall continues. After all, how much trouble could there be with only four humans on Earth?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang





	1. Seedtime

Aside from the screaming, it was a rather pleasant morning. The sun was up and warm enough that the grass they sat on was dry and comfortable, but not yet so hot that they would need to retreat under the trees or, in Cain’s case, inside the little house or one of the outbuildings.

Aziraphale had never been inside the house, and avoided it as best he could. He had no idea what kind of welcome he could expect from Adam and Eve. He had gifted them the flaming sword, of course, but he had also cast them out into the desert and sealed the wall behind them. He doubted those things netted off tidily.

He also wasn’t entirely sure what he could and could not do for them, and so preferred not to give them any opportunity to ask. His instructions from Gabriel had been rather brief[1]. It had been difficult to watch them scramble for food while walking past a thousand plants he knew to be edible (and delicious), or stand by while they spent night and day piling up rocks to build a hut he could have thrown together in an afternoon. But they were no longer in Eden, and would no longer be fed and sheltered by Heaven.

So he had watched, while they scraped and foraged and hunted and fought, and tested and discovered and succeeded and failed. Most of all, while they built. That hut became a cabin and then a house. They built a garden that became a farm.

One day, when Cain was not quite a year old, Aziraphale noticed that the harvest of grain they had so carefully set aside for the winter had spoiled, and become infested with a fungus that would twist their stomachs into knots and send both of them mad. Before he even stopped to think he’d snapped his fingers and set it to rights. He spent several days in quiet hysterics, sure that Gabriel would descend to reprimand him for interfering, or drag him back to heaven to be replaced by an angel who understood what was expected of them.

But the clouds never parted. Eve ground the grain to make bread, or threw it into soup, and heaven said nothing. The winter passed, sparse but survivable. So Aziraphale understood: they needed to work for their survival, but he could protect them when necessary. This made sense—if they were wiped out before they managed to establish themselves, Project Human would have to start all over again.

A groan cut through the silence, low and barely recognisable as human. Cain turned toward the house, his fingers tightening in the grass.

“Not to worry young man,” Aziraphale said. “Before you know it you’ll have a, a…” he fumbled for how to refer to another child of the same parents, as this baby would be the first of that kind. “A brother,” he said finally, using the word that angels used to refer to others of the same rank.

“A brother,” Cain repeated. The human tongue could not quite capture the sound, but he seemed happy with his approximation.

“A brother,” Aziraphale agreed,a little worried about the precedent he was setting. “Anyway, it all seems to be going rather well.”

Cain looked doubtful, and Aziraphale patted his shoulder, trying for the gentle grace he’d seen Adam use to comfort his son, and failing. “I know it’s a rather noisy and frightful affair, but it was much the same when you were born. Harder, really, because they had no way of knowing when to expect it, or, or, how bad it would be. Your poor father was beside himself when you were on your way out, thinking your mother was...was…” he faltered, realising that throwing the word ‘dying’ into the conversation would not take it in the hoped for direction. “Anyway. This time they knew to be ready for the happy event after about nine months, and they’ve had time to prepare a safe space, and a comfortable pile of furs, and put aside enough food that your mother can rest and recover.”

Evidently this explanation was too thorough for young Cain, whose attention had wandered. He was staring at the point where the wall of the grain store met the hard packed ground around it. Aziraphale followed his gaze and saw a mouse scurrying along the wall, searching for a gap or crevice to squeeze inside. Cain dropped to his hands and knees and crept toward it. The mouse froze for a moment, then zipped for safety. Cain swiped for it with a toddler roar, his fingers almost closing around the small grey body before it disappeared.

“Oh, do leave it alone,” Aziraphale said. He remembered Eden, when the humans and animals would never have dreamed of harming one another.

“My other friend says I can!” Cain said with a pout.

“Your other friend?” Aziraphale repeated, leaning in. Cain’s speech was coming along rapidly, but his words still tended to blur together when he was distracted.

“Yup. He’s teaching me.”

It made sense. It was a terribly lonely thing, being the only one of your kind on earth. With no other children to play with, of course Cain had invented a friend. One who, naturally, encouraged him in his impulses. Nothing to worry about, he supposed. Soon he would have a real companion.

\---

He realised his mistake soon enough. The next morning he found an enormous black serpent coiled up on the large flat rock the family used as a grindstone.

“Oh! It’s you!” Aziraphale winced at the excitement in his voice. It was the thrill of having a worthy adversary, he told himself. At finally having someone to guard the family against, after so long muddling about trying to figure out his purpose.

And alright, maybe a small twinge of pleasure at having another ethereal being—albeit a corrupted one—to talk to after years of silence from upstairs.

“Aziraphale,” Crawley said, lifting his head from the sun warmed stone to look at him. “Fancy seeing you here. Come to collect that sword, have you?”

“Er,” Aziraphale said. He had considered, when the little family seemed settled, with sturdy walls around them and a heavy wooden door, that he could grab the thing back. But he had given it to them, one couldn’t just snatch a gift back.

Not to mention that its sudden reappearance might simply highlight its previous absence to Gabriel and the others, stirring up questions about where exactly it was the last time he checked in.

“Cain’sss rather keen on it, you know,” Crawley said. “Wants it for himself, one day. Every sstick he picks up is a flaming sword.”

“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale. He perched himself on the edge of the grindstone. The warmth of it soaked through his robes. “Well, I should think the new baby will send his imagination off in a different direction.”

“Mm, the baby.” Crawley lifted his head and it kept lifting, while the shape of him stretched and warped. For a moment he was a black scaled man shape, and then they slipped away to leave the pale skin and glossy red hair Aziraphale remembered. “How did that go, then?”

His voice was light, but those fire-bright eyes slid sideways to watch Aziraphale carefully as he asked.

“Oh, as well as could be expected,” Aziraphale said. “Rather easier than the first one, at any rate.”

“Oh? Did you do something for the, uh, the pain?” Crawley gestured with a hand, flicking up to indicate a miracle.

“Oh no. No, no, no. I couldn’t, I…” Aziraphale flustered. “God made her intentions rather clear on the matter of the pain.”

“Ah.” Crawley’s mouth twisted up into an expression Aziraphale would think was guilt, if he wasn’t a demon. Then he brightened. “Perhaps next time I should, then? That’d be properly demonic, thwarting God’s will.”

Aziraphale couldn’t fault his logic, so he settled for a stern expression. “You should know I’ve been sent here to guard the humans.” A little lie, but there was no harm in lying to a demon. “Whatever plan you’re cooking up here, you should forget all about it.”

“Plan?” Crawley asked. He leaned back on his forearms, like his only plan was to keep soaking up warmth in a new shape. The neck of his robe shifted, the sharp line of a collarbone slipping into view and then away again as he stretched. “What plan could I possibly be ‘cooking up’? All the humans can do is eat, sleep and make more of themselves. Your boss only came up with one sin, and I already talked them into it.”

Again Aziraphale searched for some flaw in his reasoning, and found nothing. “Even so,” he said. “I’ll be watching you.”

\---

Crawley threw a grape in the air and caught it in his mouth, enjoying the pop and burst of sweetness as he snapped his teeth closed on it. He’d gathered a basket full, intending to test whether the Horticulture division had ever gotten around to fixing that bug where grapes, if left out in the sun for a few weeks, could turn a person all giggly.

He expected they hadn’t. The war must have derailed a great many of Heaven’s works in progress, and he suspected much about the world wasn’t up to the original specifications.

He almost tripped over Cain, who was sitting in the shade of a pomegranate tree, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

Crawley hadn’t really understood what all the fuss was about when the first baby was born. Dull, larval things that they were. In the early weeks Cain seemed more similar to a slug than a human, or an angel or demon for that matter.

But then Cain had learned to walk.

Or rather Cain had not learned to walk, at first.

He’d hauled himself up and stood on wobbly feet, his eyes going wide at this extraordinary new view of the world. Then he’d fallen, crash, back onto his rear.

But he’d gotten up again. And fallen again. Fallen forward, fallen backward, fallen sideways. Bumped his head, bashed his knees, knocked his chin. Up again, up again.

Crawley wouldn’t have blamed him for giving up on the whole lark. Eve was happy to keep delivering his meals wherever he lay, after all. But Cain would not. He fell, he got up. Until one day he stopped falling.

It was the most astounding display of will Crawley had ever seen, and he had been wrapped around Cain’s finger from that day until this.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Crawley asked. He dropped into the dirt beside him, and nudged the basket of grapes over.

“Nothing,” Cain informed the ground.

“Ah.” He let silence settle over them, and focused on savouring another grape. In his (admittedly brief) experience, pushing the issue did nothing but make the humans clam up more, whereas a sympathetic ear and some patience did all the work for him.

A flash of white out the corner of his eye grabbed his attention. Across the field, Aziraphale stood at the front door of the cottage, a smudge of something dark cradled to his chest. The baby, Crawley guessed from his stiff body language.

Cain followed his gaze, and his mouth twisted into a pout. “He’s not my friend,” he said, his voice flat.

“Aziraphale?” Crawley asked.

“The baby,” Cain said. “The angel said he was going to be my friend but he just...he just…”

“Lays there, occasionally screaming?” Crawley offered.

“Mhmm.”

That flash of white was on the move. He must have spotted the two of them, and so was on his way over before Crawley could get too deep into any wiles. Not that Crawley would make any serious attempt to influence Cain. He was just a kid, it wasn’t fair play.

Not that he would tell Aziraphale that. He didn’t want to risk having the angel stop racing to intervene whenever he noticed him talking to Cain.

“Well,” he said. “I expect the angel was thinking in the long term. You’re right, he’s not much fun now, but give him a few years and you’ll be able to get up to all sorts of mischief together.”

“Don’t want to,” Cain grumbled. “He ruined everything.”

“What’s this?” Aziraphale asked. He still had Abel with him, draped asleep along the length of one generously cushioned forearm, his head nestled in the palm of Aziraphale’s hand.

“Do Adam and Eve know you’ve absconded with their baby, angel?” Crawley asked.

“I think they’d be rather more concerned about you out here with their other baby,” Aziraphale said archly. A woven basket appeared at his feet and he settled Abel into it, pausing for a tense moment to see if he would wake. The babe slept on, and Aziraphale’s shoulders relaxed.

“Mama doesn’t care what I do,” Cain said.

“Oh, that’s not true,” Aziraphale said, in the overly jolly fake voice he always used around Cain.

“It is true!” Cain said. “All she does is shout at me. Stop getting in the way, stop making that noise, go away.”

“I believe it was ‘go play’, not ‘go away’, my dear.”

Cain grumbled like he didn’t see any difference.

Crawley remembered the long, dark nights after Cain was born—Eve still too weak and sore to continue their journey, Adam nearly asleep on his feet, the sword wobbling in his hand. From that desperation to ‘go play’ was proof that humans could make their own miracles.

“I know that your parents are rather run off their feet right now, but they love you a great deal,” Aziraphale pressed on.

And then he said it.

“And nothing could ever change that.”

“Nothing, angel?” The words were out before Crawley had even really thought them. They came from somewhere deeper inside him, that endless roaring void.

Aziraphale turned to look at him, his jovial expression dropping at the reminder that, amiable as they may be, they weren’t on the same side. “Of course nothing. Eve is his mother.”

“And nothing can ever change a mother’s love? There is nothing Cain could do that would make her turn away from him?”

Cain was watching them both with avid interest, his eyebrows pulled together in thought.

“He’s a child,” Aziraphale whispered. Crawley wasn’t sure if it was an answer to his question or a plea for him to stop.

“He won’t be a child forever. He won’t always do what he’s told. He’ll push, he’ll test, he’ll make selfish choices. And then what?”

“Then he’ll be forgiven, Crawley.” Aziraphale didn’t look away, but he wavered like he wanted to.

Crawley hated the sound of his name in the angel’s mouth. It came out like a dismissal, pushing him back into his rightful place in the dirt.

“Will he?” He dropped his voice low. “Think about what you’re saying, angel. Are you suggesting Eve is more capable of unconditional love than G—”

“Stop this right now,” Aziraphale snapped, a heavenly echo appearing behind his voice. “Cain, don’t listen to him.”

“Cain—”

“If you insist on making trouble I will cast you out,” Aziraphale interrupted.

“That’ll be a bit hard without your flaming sword, don’t you think?” Crawley said. “What are you planning to do, politely shoo me—”

Blue sky tumbled over brown earth as the world flipped upside down. Aziraphale had hooked an arm under Crawley’s bent knees and hauled him up like he weighed nothing at all. For a moment his head swung free, and he closed his eyes in preparation for an express trip downstairs once he collided with one of the sharp rocks that littered the area. But then Aziraphale’s other broad hand spread over his back, and he scooped him up.

“Okay, you’ve proved your point,” Crawley grumbled, hoping Aziraphale couldn’t feel his heart pounding against his palm.

“Not quite.”

Aziraphale tossed him as easily as one of Cain’s little rag stuffed leather balls. Crawley flailed, grabbing helplessly at empty air, and landed with a thump in the far back field. He lay on the ground, winded but unhurt, and more than a little flustered.

Aziraphale smoothed down his robe, embarrassed at how easily he’d lost his temper. It was his own fault for forgetting that Crawley was a demon.

Cain was staring, wide eyed, at the point in the sky where Crawley had disappeared from view. “Can I have a turn?” he asked, holding his chubby arms up to be lifted.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Aziraphale said, relieved that Cain seemed to have forgotten the argument already. “Come along, I’ll take you back to the house.” He took Abel’s basket by the handles and strode off, not noticing that Cain wasn’t behind him.

—-

Abel grew to be a rather delightful creature. Aziraphale had considered himself ill-suited to dealing with children, given that his conversations with Cain so frequently descended into eye-rolling and surly remarks, often ending abruptly with Cain simply walking away. But Abel was a polite, gentle, thoughtful boy.

Of course, that could also be chalked up to Crawley’s greater influence over Cain. Aziraphale knew he was still in the area, because the artworks Cain drew on the floor in charcoal, or scratched into the dirt, still featured five human-shaped figures and one large black snake.

Aziraphale pressed his thumb to one left on the back wall of the granary, a figure with enormous wings outspread, and a black snake coiled beneath.

“Want to see something cool?” Crawley’s voice rang out, like Aziraphale had summoned him by touching the snake.

Aziraphale jumped, and looked around, then realised the demon hadn’t spoken to him. He poked his head around the corner of the granary and saw Crawley with the two boys, gathered around a woven basket filled with soil. He had a bouquet of grapevines in his hand, and plucked one out and handed it to Cain. He offered one to Abel too, but he pulled back with a little shake of his head, his thumb creeping into his mouth.

“Press it into the soil,” Crawley said, demonstrating with another cutting. “They’ll strike new roots. Not all of them will make it, but give it a few weeks and you’ll have a whole crop of new grapevines ready to plant out.”

“Why not just plant the seeds?” Cain asked.

“That works too,” Crawley said. “This method is more successful, though. But don’t just believe me—why not get another basket and sow it with seeds, and see which basket does better?”

Aziraphale hesitated. He should probably go and interrupt, but he couldn’t actually see the harm in Crawley’s little lesson. As an angel, he would be overstepping if he shared too much knowledge of the world and how it worked with his human charges. But Crawley wasn’t showing them forbidden knowledge, just prodding Cain along the path.

“You can grow other plants this way,” Crawley continued. “For some, it’s the only way. Take apples, for example. You can plant the seeds, but the new tree won’t produce the same fruit. You might discover something better, something bigger or sweeter or crisper. But you could also waste all your effort on something tough and bitter.”

“I want to try!” Cain said, sounding genuinely excited.

Aziraphale stepped out and cleared his throat. Food was still scarce enough that Eve would occasionally forage a basket of wild apples, but he doubted that planting an orchard’s worth of apple seeds next to the homestead would endear her eldest son to her.

He tried not to look at Crawley, but it was impossible. He didn’t look the slightest bit chagrined or caught out. His mouth quirked into a smile, and Aziraphale sucked his lips against his teeth to avoid smiling back.

—-

“I’m thinking of using these ones for the cuttings this year,” Cain said, pointing for a row of vines that had put out noticeably more fruit than the others. “And that one bush that had the really sweet grapes. Maybe if we grow those together we’ll end up with some that are really sweet and grow a lot, then if we use those for cuttings I could have a whole field of them in a few years.”

Crawley nodded. His golden eyes never hid anything that he was feeling, and Aziraphale had to look away. Everything inside him felt too large. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to let go of the feeling. If pride was a sin, it was better left to Crawley.

“You’ll run out of room soon,” he said. The vineyard now covered all the space between the house and the river, and the grain fields were an ocean of gold by harvest time. Not to mention the little stand of apple saplings Cains still stubbornly tended behind the house.

“We’ll never run out of room,” Cain said. “If Dad and I can dig another irrigation ditch this winter, we could open up the plain to the east for planting.”

“Perhaps Abel could help you,” Aziraphale said. “Give your Dad a rest.”

“Abel’s too little for that,” Cain said.

“I am not,” Abel said.

Aziraphale startled. He hadn’t realised Abel was lurking around the field, although he should have. Abel wanted to be wherever Cain was these days.

“Yes you are,” Cain said. “Besides, Mama wouldn’t let you.”

“You were helping dig the ditches at my age—”

“Oh, I know.”

Aziraphale pasted on his best smile. The bickering between the two boys had increased in both frequency and volume in recent months. “Say,” he said, pretending the idea had just struck him. “I heard your mother say that several more of the ewes lambed in the night. Shall we go take a look?”

Abel brightened, the argument forgotten in an instant. “Yes!”

Cain rolled his eyes. “That’s for babies.”

Abel’s smile vanished, and Aziraphale pushed his wider, like that could make up for it. He thought it best to just cheerfully push on when they got like this. Eventually they would understand that this world they had been given was huge beyond their comprehension, too large to explore within their lifetimes, or their children’s lifetimes. Not only was there room for both of them, they would need each other to survive it.

For all his griping, Cain followed them without further complaint, and seemed charmed by the wobbly legged new arrivals.

Abel leaned against the fence, staring entranced at the nearest lamb lurking beneath her mother. The ewe swung her head around to stare at them, open suspicion in her dark eyes.

“Aziraphale?” Abel asked, resting his chin on the crossbeam. “When are you and Crawley going to have a baby?”

Aziraphale choked on air, and behind him Crawley barked out a shocked laugh. “Pardon?”

“A baby,” Abel repeated with an air of enormous patience. “The sheep have one or two every year. Mama and Dad have me’n Cain. When are you going to have one?”

“Oh, well, um. No. We’re not going to have a baby. Making more of yourself is a uniquely human ability,” Aziraphale said. He looked up at the sky, praying that Abel would not ask how, exactly.

“To be fair, we’ve never actually tried—” Crawley interjected.

“Shut up, please, Crawley,” Aziraphale said with a sigh.

“Just saying.”

“If you had a baby,” Cain said, “I could marry them. When they grow up, I mean.”

“Or me!” Abel said.

“No,” Cain said. “I’m older, it’s only fair.”

“You always say that!” Abel whined.

“If we had a baby—which, again, we will not—then I rather think it would be up to them who they married,” Aziraphale ventured.

Both boys rolled their eyes. At least Aziraphale could take comfort in having made them agree on something.

In the distance, the clanging of a spoon against a cooking pot signalled that Eve wanted the boys to come home for dinner.

“That went well,” Crawley said brightly, once the boys were out of earshot.

“You were no help,” Aziraphale said.

“Yeah, well, not here to help you, am I?”

Aziraphale fell silent, chastened by the reminder. It was too easy to fall into thinking Crawley was an ally, of sorts. After so many years down here it felt like the dividing line was humans vs immortals, not angels vs demons.

“How are they going to go about begetting a third generation, anyway? Is God planning to yank more ribs out?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale hadn’t really pondered the question before. “I’m sure there’s a plan.”

“It's a bit weird that they haven’t told you. You’re their operative on the ground, shouldn’t you know the plan?”

Aziraphale bristled. “What makes you think I don’t know? Obviously I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“Nah. If you know the plan, you say ‘we have a plan’, not ‘I’m sure there’s a plan.’”

“We have a plan,” Aziraphale said, and he pretended not to hear Crawley’s soft laugh in response.

—-

“Pull me up!” Abel shouted, reaching into the void above him. He had hands like Adam’s, long and elegant, but had not inherited his father’s strength as quickly as Cain had. In Cain the shape of the man to come was already apparent. He would be tall and solid and fearless like his father.

Adam and Eve seemed to never tire of finding their own features in their sons. Aziraphale could understand the impulse—it was charming, the way the four humans could be so alike and so different at the same time. But he worried sometimes. Cain also had Eve’s sharp chin, and her endless thirst to know more about the world. She never pointed these out, preferring to see herself in Abel’s high brows and softly curling hair.

It felt at some moments like Eve and her eldest son stood on opposite sides of a river too deep for either of them to cross. Something had been lost when his first months were spent in terror, hunger and endless toil. If Aziraphale could see it from the outside, then Cain surely could feel it.

“Climb up yourself,” Cain shouted back. Within moments he was several branches above Abel, scrambling up the tree like he’d been built for it.

Crawley, who actually was built for it, was close to the top. It was hypnotic to watch him unwinding and rewinding himself around the trunk to shimmy straight up. The mid-morning sunlight rippled across his scales like water.

Abel grumbled to himself and shuffled along the lowest branch, searching for a point where one of the branches above dipped low enough for him to grab on. He found it and hung on, trying one, two, three times before he succeeded in swinging one foot up to hook on. From there he swung his body up, and then lay on his belly on the branch looking amazed at himself.

Cain bounded from branch to branch like a tree frog, grabbing dusky pink apples and tossing them over his shoulder into the basket tied to his back. At one point he zipped past where Crawley was dangling his head, and bopped him on the snout with two fingers. Aziraphale guffawed at the affronted look on Crawley’s face.

In a flash Cain had stripped the tree of all but the still-green apples, and one enormous, rich pink fruit that stayed stubbornly just out of reach, no matter how he contorted himself.

“Abel!” Cain called down. Abel was still determinedly making his way up one branch at a time. “I need your help!”

Abel’s face lit up at those words, and he closed the gap between them with renewed strength. This time Cain did lean down and gripped his hand, helping him clamber up.

“That branch can’t take my weight,” he said, pointing above them at the narrow branch that held the last ripe apple. “But you’re still so scrawny, you’ll be fine.”

The happiness dimmed a little, but Abel kept smiling. “Boost me?” he asked. He reached his arms up to show that he couldn’t reach.

Cain hesitated a moment—he had one hand pressed against the tree trunk for balance—then squared his jaw and nodded. He slid his feet a little wider, and laced his fingers together to make a step. Abel stepped in, his hands on Cain’s shoulders, and then stretched his arms above his head again.

—-

For a moment the scene below Crawley was charming, the two boys working together to get what they wanted. Abel wrapped his fingers around the branch and dangled by one hand, then quickly grabbed on with the other. He lifted his foot out of Cain’s hands, his biceps straining as he pulled himself up.

Under Abel’s full weight, the branch ripped away from the trunk with a crack like thunder. Abel screamed, and fell.

Cain echoed the shout and flailed, trying to grab him. He succeeded only in losing his own balance.

Crawley shot down the tree, unwinding himself as quickly as possible, and grabbed the only one of them he could reach in time. He wrapped himself around Cain’s ankle, and squeezed his eyes shut.

At this height, the only realistic hope was that it would be fast and painless.

A thump. A scream. Another echo from Cain. “Abel!”

A ragged breath in. Crawley wasn’t even sure which boy it came from.

Then running feet.

Crawley opened his eyes. He didn’t look at the spray of red, or the obvious pain in Abel’s still-bright eyes. He looked at the angel’s hands, which usually fluttered everywhere but now lay so gently on Abel’s cheeks.

Abel’s face scrunched up, and then his whole body relaxed. He sat up, looking puzzled.

“You gave us all a little fright there,” Aziraphale said. His voice was cheerful but his hands, which he pulled into his lap, were trembling. They left pink smudges on his white robes.

Crawley carefully lowered Cain down to the ground. The two boys stood in the shadow of the tree, staring at each other in open terror. Then Cain hauled his brother in for a crushing hug, which Abel returned. The way his fingers dug into Cain’s back had to be painful, but he showed no sign of it.

Once they had left, not stopping to collect the apples that scattered on the ground during the fall, Crawley shifted to his man shaped form.

“Lucky you were here,” he said softly.

“It’s my job,” Aziraphale said, the fake cheer gone. “Right?” He looked up at the clear blue sky, but he didn’t look grateful. If Crawley didn’t know better he would think he looked worried. Frightened, even.


	2. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: this chapter roughly follows the Genesis story in which Cain murders his brother Abel. While the actual violence occurs off the page it is discussed in rather blunt terms at one point. 
> 
> There is also a brief moment where Aziraphale manhandles Crawley in anger but doesn't cause any actual harm. He is under the mistaken belief that Crawley was involved in the murder at the time.

“Cain’s in a strop,” Crawley said. He’d spread a blanket on a hill overlooking the house and its altar. The ground was pebbled and uneven, but beneath the blanket was miraculously soft. He’d set out an array of dishes with grapes, dates, nuts and sliced apples, all drizzled with honey. As the early rays of sun crept over the blanket they warmed the honey, scenting the air with rich sweetness.

“When is he not?” Aziraphale asked. He’d accepted Crawley’s offer to share the blanket while they watched, but had told himself he wouldn’t accept any of his food. This pledge lasted exactly thirty seven seconds. “What has him upset today?”

“Well, Adam and Eve announced that they would both make their first offering today. He’s miffed because that means they made him wait until he was fifteen, and Abel gets to do it at only twelve.” 

“Hmm.” Aziraphale chased a drop of honey that had dripped down his wrist, sucking at his pale skin. 

“I…” Crawley seemed to lose his trail of thought for a moment, then blinked slowly. “I sympathise with him. It would do him good to have a special day of his own.”

“All the more reason not to ruin it getting worked up about trivial things,” Aziraphale said.

“I don’t know that it’s trivial.” Crawley stared down at Cain walking among the vines. He fussed with this one and that, looking for suitable fruits for his offering basket. “And everything seems monumental at his age. Whose idea was it to dump a bucket full of hormones on them all at once?”

“Raphael’s,” Aziraphale said gloomily. “I was in that policy meeting, it was the best of a whole crop of bad options.” 

“Ugh.” Crawley remembered those meetings. He’d seen scuffles at the whiteboards that rivalled the War itself. 

He picked up the jug of water and splashed some into a glazed clay cup. “Anyway, here’s to you.” He passed it to Aziraphale.

“To me?” Aziraphale took it, his voice a mix of surprise and suspicion. 

“They’re men now,” Crawley said, filling his own cup. “Rather good men, it seems. Congratulations.” He leaned over and tapped his cup against Aziraphale’s. 

“I suppose that’s bad news for you?”

“Ehh.” Crawley shrugged. “I’ve still got a lot of capital to coast on from the whole ‘forbidden fruit’ business. You can have this one. But!” he gestured with his cup. “Don’t go getting complacent. Hastur keeps agitating to be let up here to burn down some fields. I use a bit of that capital every time I tell him to stay the hell—literally—out of my territory.” 

“Shh, shh, it’s starting,” Aziraphale said. Down below, Abel emerged from the barn with the season’s first lamb in his arms, a freshly sharpened blade hanging from his belt. 

Five millennia later, when Aziraphale stood in front of Genesis in the yard of Bilton and Scaggs with a correction quill in hand, he did not turn to the next page. He had read the story only once, and found that it was both broadly accurate and unbearable. 

_In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering She had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell._

Aziraphale could have, if so inclined, added a mention of the enraged demon who came instantly to Cain’s defense—not against the Lord Herself, but Her nearest representative on Earth. 

“What the Heavens?” Crawley snapped, leaping to his feet and tipping over the platter of dates. One splattered against Aziraphale’s ankle and stuck there. 

He picked it off and threw it into the grass, then scrubbed at the sticky mark on his skin with his thumb, focusing on that to try and ignore the discomfort rising inside him. 

“If she only wanted bloody meat then say so! Or tell you to say so! Are they supposed to just _guess_ that she’s not a fan of fruit?”

“To be fair,” Aziraphale said, in the small voice of someone who knew he wasn’t voicing something fair, “that is the one thing they do know—”

“That is not the same and you know it,” Crawley snarled. 

“Perhaps the issue is not meat vs fruit, but the nature of the sacrifice itself. You must admit Abel’s represents a greater—”

“Who says I must?” Crawley interrupted. “How is it greater? The sheep did all the work making those lambs. You know that Cain worked for years on that strain of grapes.”

“Yes, but by sacrificing them, Abel’s losing not just those lambs but all the lambs they would have produced. Cain worked hard, but there will be many more grapes from those vines. Perhaps an equivalent sacrifice would have been to rip the vines themselves up by the roots and present them.” Aziraphale’s mouth felt like it was filling up with sand. He was an angel of the Lord. Crawley was one of the fallen. He couldn’t allow even the thought that Crawley had a glimmer of a point to settle in his mind, or surely he would be lost too. So why did he find himself leaning towards him? “Or...or maybe it isn’t about the sacrifice at all. Abel is gentle, and kind, and thinks of others. Cain… has his fine qualities, but...” 

“Cain can be a prat, but there are only four humans alive. If she’s already playing favourites, how is it going to work when there are billions of them?” Crawley folded his arms, a gesture that looked like an attempt to hug himself. “Bessssides. Wait until Abel gets hit with the hormone bucket too, see if he’s still a picture of sweetness and light.”

Down the hill, Cain was arguing with the Lord. Aziraphale would be impressed at how brave his rage had made him, if it wasn’t so terrifying. 

“Wait,” Crawley said. His golden eyes narrowed so much that his slit pupils became tiny black squares. “You don’t know,” he breathed. 

“I don’t know what?”

“You. Don’t. Know.” Crawley took a step closer to him. “You’re speculating. Which means you don’t actually know why God is unimpressed with Cain’s offering. You’re an angel, and you could have made the same mistake he did.”

Aziraphale’s heart clenched in agony, like Crawley had punched straight through his chest and grabbed it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he whispered. 

Cain swept his cornucopia of grapes and wheat onto the ground, and stormed away, toward the edge of the farm and the wilderness beyond. Crawley sprinted down the hill after him. 

Aziraphale placed a hand on the tree, leaning on it for support. Crawley was being ridiculous, as usual. Ridiculous. 

He was relieved when Cain returned, and asked his brother to come with him to the back field. Aziraphale had been afraid the boy would take out his frustrations on his brother, as he so often had. 

—-

Eve screamed out God’s name. It was half prayer, half involuntary howl. Her knees were in the dirt, her palms and forehead pressed flat to the grindstone, her body convulsing with misery. Adam knelt behind her, hands on her shoulders and his calves bracketing hers. He pressed his face to her hair, silent and still. 

Crawley didn’t know where Cain was. It was pointless to flee, but he remembered the impulse to try. 

He was glad he hadn’t eaten any of the food he’d gathered for the angel. His mouth and throat burned with stomach acid, and he swallowed it down. 

Something slammed into his back, and he hit the granary wall with a gasp. Aziraphale’s breath burned on the back of his neck as he snapped, “What did you do?”

“Do?” Crawley asked. He tried to push back against the hand that held him in place, but Aziraphale was like a boulder pinning him down. It didn’t hurt, but he wasn’t going anywhere until Aziraphale wanted him to. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Of course not. You never do. The whole point is they have to do it themselves, don’t they?” 

“You’re not suggesting this was my idea?” 

“Why not? You scrambled off after him, and the next thing he comes back and… and…” Aziraphale can’t even say the words, and somehow Crawley’s heart aches even more. “Like you said, you’re not here to help, are you?” 

“I just listened to him. That’s all he really needs, someone to listen.”

“Obviously not! Having a sympathetic ear just feeds his sense of..of...frustrated entitlement. He needed counsel, not for someone to press on the sore points, wind him up and point him at an innocent child.” Aziraphale’s voice shuddered. “I should have stopped you. I should have gone after him myself. Why did I—”

“It’s not your fault, angel,” Crawley said softly. 

Aziraphale’s hand slid down Crawley’s spine, making him shiver, and then pulled away. “Maybe this can all be put right,” he said. “It’s so early, everything is so experimental. I can talk to Her—”

“It can be put right,” Crawley said. “But you know She’s not going to.” 

Aziraphale didn’t even try arguing. “What did you say to him?” 

“Not much. Comforting noises, mostly. And the same thing I said to you—that She should be able to love both of them.”

Aziraphale’s voice froze the air around them. “You told him She couldn’t love them both?”

“No, I said—”

“I heard what you said. What do you think he heard?” 

“I’m surprised you’re not dizzy yet, the way this keeps ssspinning back around to being my fault,” Crawley spat. “What about what you’ve said to him?”

“I’ve done nothing but try to steer him toward the right path.” 

“What about when you told him that no matter what he did, he would be forgiven? If someone doesn’t know there are limits, how can they be careful of them? He thinks he’s safe pushing, questioning, and then slam!” 

“He committed murder, Crawley. That’s not pushing the limits. He had to know that was unforgivable.”

“Did he? They’re all just fumbling around down here, trying to figure it out.”

Aziraphale threw his hands up in the air. “You can’t honestly believe they need that explained to them. What next? Shall we write out a whole list for them? Don’t steal? Don’t go inventing other Gods and giving them all the credit?”

“Well, that’s the only sin She actsssually cares about, isn’t it?” Crawley stepped forward, his face only inches from Aziraphale’s. “Credit Me. Praise Me. Even after I throw you out, after I dole out punishments that will echo through a hundred thousand generations. Fight each other for My regard.”

“That is not…” Aziraphale’s voice wobbled. “You’re a demon.”

“There it isss. Your ultimate winning move.You don’t have to listen to that little voice that says maybe he hasssss a point. He’s just a demon.” 

“This isn’t some philosophical discussion. We’re not lolling around Upstairs after a workday having a debate—”

“Oh? Still have those, do they?”

Aziraphale looked away, which meant no. “His feelings were hurt, so he smashed a child’s head in with a rock.”

All the fight went out of Crawley. He sagged back against the granary wall. Aziraphale did the same, both of them panting like they’d actually battled it out. 

Above them the clouds parted, and a beam of light marked out the spot where Cain must be hiding. 

“Aziraphale,” the voice of God called. 

The judgement of Cain had begun. 

—-

  
  


When Aziraphale first met Cain, the boy was only five hours old. His mother slept on a lion hide beside the fire, her knees pulled up and her arm outstretched to create a safe hollow for the baby. Adam was asleep on his feet.

Cain, like most babies would after him, had fallen asleep shortly after birth and remained asleep for several hours. The recovery sleep, humans would come to call it.The act of entering the world was so chaotic and troubling that, once they were warmed and fed, they needed to retreat from it again immediately. 

Cain had awoken, and was fussing quietly. Aziraphale stepped silently through the camp and scooped him up, trying to secure his parents a little more rest, even if only a few minutes. He pressed Cain to his chest, lightly fuzzed head tucked inside the palm of his hand, and shushed him. But Cain would not settle. Aziraphale patted and cooed and danced, but still Cain fussed and struggled. 

Then Aziraphale realised. It wasn’t the warmth of skin Cain wanted, or the feeling of strong hands cradling him. It was the familiar thump-thump-thump of a heartbeat that he had slept beneath for nine months. 

Aziraphale’s corporation had a heart, but it served no purpose and had sat silent in his chest until that moment. With a click of his fingers he set it beating, and at last the babe sank back into sleep. 

—-

There was still so much of that baby in Cain’s face. Aziraphale pressed his thumb to Cain’s forehead, the heel of his hand resting as gently as he could down the ridge of his nose, his remaining fingers fanned across a cheek that was still soft and full. 

Terror shone in Cain’s eyes, but he held Aziraphale’s gaze steadily. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, but not for the Mark, as holy light flared in the pad of his thumb and branded Cain’s skin forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> 11“Oh. Aziraphale. You’re still… ok. Why don’t you stay here and keep an eye on things. Great. Thanks champ.”[return to text]


End file.
